Smart Growth Hamilton

Demographic and economic research published recently by Michael Moffatt, Senior Director, Smart Prosperity and Assistant Prof, Ivey Business School, demonstrate that over the last decade, not only have municipalities within the Greater Golden Horseshoe been growing at a significant rate, but that growth has in fact been accelerating. This acceleration has also been experienced within the City of Hamilton with the population growing by 2.8% between 2010-15 and accelerating to a 6.3% increase between 2015-20.

Canadians including those in Hamilton spent 2020 mostly buying one kind of housing (single detached), but the previous decade building another (apartments and townhomes). This mismatch between supply and demand is creating an increasingly constrained supply of single-family homes and contributing to rapidly escalating housing prices in Hamilton. The political debate around expanding or not expanding Hamilton’s urban boundary could lock in another couple of decades of building almost exclusively high density housing in Hamilton, despite some families needing room to grow and a backyard. Hamilton would quickly become just like Toronto or Vancouver where the socio-economic divide worsens between those whom own homes with backyards in neighbourhoods and those whom live in small condos or rent.

How realistic are Hamilton’s intensification plans? The “ambitious density scenario” with a small urban boundary expansion has an intensification target of 60%. The “No Boundary Expansion” option has a minimum intensification target of 81%. Historically, Hamilton has come nowhere close to achieving these kinds of intensification numbers. Can Hamilton do better – yes of course, but the city could be setting itself up to fail to come anywhere close to building the necessary supply of housing for Hamiltonians, making the existing housing crisis far worse.

Hamilton can support more intensification, especially with the now fully funded LRT on the way. Far more needs to be done to turn NIMBYism into Yes In My Backyard. To achieve higher intensification targets, Hamilton needs to eliminate minimum parking requirements, modernize low-density residential zoning to allow ALL TYPES of low-rise housing throughout existing neighbourhoods including semis, triplexes, townhomes and low-rise apartments, up-zone all avenues and corridors to allow mid-rise housing as-of-right and significantly increase height and density limits in some parts of the city. The City has just done a great job in the last few years of putting in place the downtown’s secondary plan, but more will need to be done under higher intensification scenarios. These are fundamental changes that can and should happen in Hamilton.

The new housing, land development and professional renovation sector is the industry that drives Hamilton’s economy. In 2019 the industry supported over 20,000 well paying jobs in the skilled trades and professional services such as real estate, finance, architecture and planning. These jobs generated $1.3 billion in wages and $2.3 billion in investment. The residential construction industry led Canada out of the 2008/09 financial crisis and is well positioned to do so again in the post pandemic recovery.

Hamilton needs the room to grow – Hamilton Spectator: https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/2021/05/25/hamilton-needs-the-room-to-grow-and-build.html

The elephant in the room: explosive population growth – Hamilton Spectator: https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/2021/03/24/the-elephant-in-the-room-explosive-population-growth.html

Rein in housing prices, build more houses – Hamilton Spectator: https://www.thespec.com/opinion/editorials/2021/05/20/rein-in-housing-prices-build-more-houses.html